Should We or Not? - Stories - Heroes

Few days back Josh, a friend of mine, posted an intriguing comment on his facebook page. “How long do we read about people like David, Benaiah, and Peter and feel good about what they did? Aren’t we called to be part of that league? Let's do something "worth His calling" with our life!”

Honestly, this comment has a resounding truth in it. Whether he made it with an encouraging tone or exasperated tone, it is something worth pondering. We can’t sit on our own comfortable chairs and do the ‘bhajans’ of those who chased lions all our lives; and yet at the same time shriek away from our own lions. Sooner or later we will inevitably get bored of listening to the same story and there is always a lurking danger of developing indifference towards those courageous acts of our heroes.

Therefore our primary question is, should we or should we not listen to the stories of heroes of the Bible?

In my personal opinion, the courageous acts of yesterday’s heroes are inspirations for today’s generation. They become useful if we ‘learn’ from them, they are useless if we just ‘listen’ to them.

Reading or listening to monumental acts of Benaiah, three thousand years ago, can bring a sense of amazement and a sense of incredulity. One man single handed chases a lion on a snowy day into a pit and kills it, with or without weapon. The story has a ‘too good to be true’ ring to it. And yet it is a true incident. A boy takes on a giant, four times taller and heavier, with a sling and a stone; a fisher man walks on water; three young men walk into a fiery furnace and walk out without a scratch. All these stories are unbelievable, but they are true, historical and authentic. No matter how many times we talk about them, they are still going to cause some wonder in some body at some point of recollection.

Psychologists say, a person needs to hear at least sixteen times for anything to turn into a belief. Therefore repetition is necessary. That is the reason, we repeatedly hear and learn the same things over and over again in different ways from the time we join nursery till we graduate from a university. My point is, not only we need to consider what our heroes have done in past but we must also hear them frequently.

Hearing these courageous acts of past has its own advantages, first of all we will always find some revelation of the character of God; we also find inspiration from them to face our own horrors; we might even end up learning few tricks for ourselves in lion hunting. Virtues like faith, courage, patience and honor are always present. These heroes will pop into our minds at right moments to fill us with hope. They are definitely beneficial and valuable.

I strongly believe there are also certain disadvantages, let me put them in simple terms. By hearing heroic stories repeatedly, our sense of wonder diminishes; our desire to learn from them weakens and our resolution to imitate them withers away over time.

So, I think the question is not really, should we or should we not talk about past heroes, or how many times are we suppose to talk about them. But the real question is, are we learning or just listening?

I plan to explore on the reasons behind these loses and find some practical solution for our predicament in the next installment.